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Watch the full conversation with Joel Rubin on Vicky Ward Investigates.
Watch the full conversation with Joel Rubin on Vicky Ward Investigates.
This newsletter has been updated to reflect the breaking news at 5.45pm that Luigi Mangione’s lawyers have withdrawn their intent to use a psychiatric defense. One wonders why…
Hey Everyone,
Yesterday, I pegged it back from the latest Luigi Mangione hearing at New York State Supreme Courthouse to sit down with the journalist and author Nina Burleigh, author of American Freak Show, here on substack to discuss the latest Epstein news and her excellent reporting around it. (Next week she has a “bombshell” to deliver around the financier Leon Black, who testifies to Congress on June 26. We will back, talking about it).
First, though: Luigi.
Tempers frayed on both sides of the New York State courtroom yesterday in a an emotional, fiery hearing.
Luigi’s lawyers said they would file to pursue a “psychiatric defense”, in other words they may argue at trial that Luigi suffered from “extreme emotional disturbance” at the time of Brian Thompson’s murder. That was yesterday. Suddenly they’ve withdrawing this application and so all the records that would pertain to this are staying sealed.
What is the significance of this back and forth? I don’t know. Karen Friedman Agnifilo mentioned in state court that the unsealing of these records could be prejudicial to Luigi down the road in his federal trial, currently scheduled for January. Extreme Emotional Disturbance “EED” pertains to a New York statute, not a federal one.
That it was brought up at all is a big deal. It was the first implicit admission by Luigi’s defense that he murdered Brian Thompson. If it was applied, at trial, the prosecution would still have to prove to a jury that Luigi committed the alleged crime. But if a jury also believed he was suffering from an “EED” and “a profound loss of control” as it’s termed, then the highest charge he could be convicted of is manslaughter.
Anyway it’s moot now.
But back to the fireworks in court yesterday: Assistant district attorney Joel Seidemann looked like he might choke he was so furious as he preemptively asked Judge Gregory Carro to prevent the defense from pushing back the trial beyond September 8th. Seidemann said that Brian Thompson’s mother is 78 and is entitled to know “the why and the who” it came to be that she buried her son before the end of her life. This caused Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Luigi’s counsel to bark that she hadn’t actually asked to delay anything. Yet. No matter, it was nowJudge Carro’s turn to shout angrily, as he instructed her firmly that the trial would start on September 8th as scheduled.
This was not the only Luigi drama playing in Manhattan, however.
Last night I went to see Luigi: The Musical, here in New York for four nights only. This is the show, which notes in its marketing, a one word review in the San Francisco Chronicle: “terrible.”
My takeaways:
So, back to Nina and Epstein.
Nina is one of the reporters behind The Cover-Up, the Courier News project devoted to combing through the mountain of Epstein documents that have emerged over the last year. Alongside her reporting partner Katie Chenoweth, she has become one of the most dogged investigators of the files, following obscure threads that many larger news organizations have overlooked.
In our conversation we discuss:
Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.
Hey Everyone,
Julie K. Brown joined me yesterday to discuss yesterday’s congressional testimony from Bill Gates, as well as that of longtime Epstein associates Sarah Kellen and Lesley Groff. (Groff testified on Tuesday and Kellen testified on May 21st).
We don’t yet have transcripts for Groff and Gates but we do know that Gates told congress that Epstein had knowledge of his extra-marital affairs and tried to leverage that to re-engage with him, after Gates had decided Epstein could not be useful in helping him scale his philanthropy and dropped him in 2014. Gates said Epstein’s efforts at re-engagement were unsuccessful. Still, it’s the first time someone has raised Epstein’s predilection for attempted blackmail to Congress; a reminder, as Julie points out, that if Epstein was a threat to someone like Gates, then of course his vulnerable female victims stood no chance.
What I hope the transcript will show is exactly how Epstein gained knowledge of Gates’ private life. Based on my own reporting – and that of the Wall Street Journal – a key conduit between Epstein and Gates was the mysterious figure of Melanie Walker, a neurology professor and an Epstein protege who met Epstein with Donald Trump over tea at the Plaza hotel in the 1990s. Walker was fresh out of college and was thinking about a modeling career at the time, but Epstein encouraged her to pursue medicine instead. While she attended medical school she listed an address in the New York building on East 66th street where Epstein housed many other women who “worked” for him. He told people that Walker was his “science advisor”.
Years later, the Wall Street Journal reported that Walker wound up having a sexual relationship with Gates in 2017, while taking all sorts of direction from Epstein, according to text messages now unearthed by the Gates Foundation, which is conducting an investigation into Gates relationship with Epstein….
Hey Everyone,
There’s no one better than Joel Rubin, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for House Affairs under Obama, to break down where we are with the war in Iran.
The motif of today’s discussion is: “Trump appears to keep on squandering his leverage.”
Joel argues that he did it with Iran, by backing off from applying military pressure (albeit for understandable reasons).
Trouble is, Trump now finds himself boxed in, because he wants the Iranians to agree to a ceasefire and to opening the straits of Hormuz and to getting rid of their enriched uranium but without paying them anything. And there’s the rub.
Because if he offers sanctions relief or any financial assistance, he risks opening himself up to the same criticism that he heaped on Obama – who offered sanctions relief in exchange for an agreement to not build a bomb.
If he capitulates and does strike an Obama-type deal, will the Democrats try to fight him on a solution with Iran because of this, in an effort to press political advantage ahead of the midterms? It’s a possibility, says Joel. We both hope not, however.
We move on to the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainians have just bombed St Petersburg – right before Putin hosts his economic summit there – the Russian version of Davos. Reportedly, the far-right lunatics Candace Owens and Andrew Tate are there as guests of the Kremlin….to which, no words. But I promise you I will get Russian dissident Mikhail Zygar on here shortly to tell us what he makes of that – and what they are saying inside Russia about this.
For now it seems the Ukrainians have the advantage in the conflict. Yet again, says Joel, you could (cynically) argue that Trump squandered his leverage over Ukraine when he had it, if he was serious about pulling off a peace – albeit not a kind of peace most of us would have condoned.
We move to Venezuela. Again, says Joel, reports that the new Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodriguez is struggling to provide the transparency about oil money that Washington asked for is another instance of where Trump squandered his leverage. He could have negotiated to return María Corina Machado the Nobel prize winner and opposition leader to lead Venezuela, thereby bringing about democracy…but no.
China? What did we get out of the China State Visit?…Er nothing…
You get the drift.
Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.
Hey Everyone,
Thank you for joining me for today’s live video chat with Alex Murdaugh’s defense attorney, Jim Griffin. (And, here’s the link to the ten minute video that concludes our chat, after Jim’s screen froze at 50 minutes). As I wrote yesterday, Alex Murdaugh’s convictions for murdering his wife, Maggie and his son, Paul, have been overturned by South Carolina’s Supreme Court. It’s a sensational twist in already sensational story.
So, here’s what I learned in our riveting conversation that I did not know previously:
Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.
This week’s live video chat was a deviation from my norm.
I spoke to the writer Danielle Crittenden Frum, whom I have known for many years, about her memoir: Dispatches of Grief: A Mother’s Journey Through The Unthinkable in which she describes the horrendous journey she has been on since unexpectedly losing her first-born 32-year-old daughter, Miranda, in February 2024.
She explains she didn’t intend to write a book initially, but she’s a trained reporter who comes from a family of journalists, and out of habit, she’d write down scenes and feelings in real time, feeling “like a foreign correspondent in a war zone”. Slowly she began to realize that what she had might be of value – to her and to other people.
She discovered that there’s not much useful literature out there when something this devastating occurs. She found C. S. Lewis’s memoir, A Grief Observed, on losing his wife, Joy, to cancer, helpful, but the famous Five Stages Of Grief by Elisabeth Kubler Ross was “a joke….there is no order to this grief.” And as for Joan Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking? “It’s so name-droppy…I am not interested in what table you sat at.”
Read the rest of the article and watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.
Hey Everyone,
Thank you for tuning into to my live broadcast from the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room in TriBeCa in Manhattan.
Adam Klasfeld and I did NOT discuss Leon Black’s testimony to the House Oversight Committee – because it’s been postponed to June 26th.
But we did discuss:
a) the powerful impact of the pop-up museum that is the Epstein Files Reading Room. I tried to give you a virtual tour.
b) what we make of the alleged Epstein suicide note
c) the strange case of the “Jane Doe”, who accused Leon Black of rape (he says he never even met her) and whose lawyer has been sanctioned by a judge.
d) The stunning reversal of Alex Murdaugh’s conviction of murdering his wife and son.
e) Luigi Mangione’s imminent important state court hearing
e) the latest in the ongoing immigration case of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia
f) The debacle of the Louisiana v. Callais decision, weakening the Voting Rights Act and causing mayhem in Alabama
AND
last but not least: Stacey Williams joined me live in the reading room, her eyes filled with tears, as she talked.
Read the rest of the article and watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.
Hey Everyone,
If, like me, you feel you’ve suffered whiplash, with a new announcement as to where we are in the war with Iran coming every few hours since Monday morning’s announcement we were ending Operation Epic Fury and launching Operation Freedom (now stopped while we might- or might not – be negotiating a deal with Iran)…well: Joel Rubin is the perfect person to explain what is ACTUALLY going on.
The answer, of course, is that beneath the schizophrenic bluster, there is, alas no actual policy or plan. President Trump’s best hope is that Iran will agree to open up the Straits of Hormuz in exchange for a deal on nuclear enrichment. BUT, asks Joel, “how do you get there?” As we’ve seen in the last 24 hours both sides are flexing their muscles, in a seemingly endless game of chicken.
Joel’s biggest fear is that if he gets an agreement, Trump will be content with a quick two page term sheet – rather than letting the State Department spend months drafting hundreds of pages containing detailed technicalities with clear endpoints about what Iran will or will not do in terms of uranium enrichment and sanctions around Hormuz etcetera.
My response to that is: of course Trump will walk away without going through the laborious process of hashing out the details! He’s a real estate developer from New York! I’ve written a book about real estate developers from New York. According to my reporting, wherever possible they avoid putting anything in writing, because that gives them the option to re-trade tomorrow, and deny they’d ever agreed on anything in the first place.
We go on to discuss Marco Rubio’s came on in the White House Briefing Room yesterday and what that might mean.
And then we get to Joel’s new book, Saving Democratic American Foreign Policy which you can buy here on Amazon.
In it, Joel argues that Democrats have not done nearly enough to define their foreign policy goals and explain to the American people why what they stand for is in their interests. (I agree wholeheartedly on that). He puts forward policy positions that he says encapsulate the three Ps: pragmatism, patriotism and populism.
You can hear a few of his ideas in our conversation.
Finally, he addresses the troubling issue of the rise of anti-semitism in the US and globally. The anti-Defamation League has published a report saying that we have reached the highest level of physical threats tied to antisemitism in 46 years. Joel isn’t worried by just the fact of that – but that this behavioral trend is being normalized within our society.
It’s a somber but important note to end on.
Watch the full conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates.
Hey Everyone,
The ghost of Jeffrey Epstein hovers over everything, still, seeming to tarnish and destroy everything in its path.
There’s tragic news from Norway (where I was two weeks ago). Edward Rød-Larsen, the 25-year-old son of Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul, two Norwegian diplomats severely impacted by the Epstein files, died a couple days ago by suicide. The family lawyer appears to have blamed the media in a public statement.
My Norwegian friends tell me this is likely to become a massive debate in the coming days and weeks. Of course, the press reported hard on the couple’s dealings with Epstein (Rod-Larsen borrowed a considerable sum of money from Epstein without declaring it), and the government is investigating the couple, who are elderly.
So, should the media have done anything differently? The focus was not on the couple’s son.
But, as we know, Epstein’s wingspan was enormous. And the amount of collateral damage in this hideous story continues to pile up.
I was in DC over the weekend because of another horrendous suicide that is Epstein-related; I attended a powerful, moving memorial service for Virginia Roberts Giuffre, to mark the one year anniversary of her tragic death.
Virginia’s two brothers and their wives were present along with her publicist Dini Von Mueffling. So too were several of the Epstein survivors who paid homage to the one amongst them whose bravery was pivotal in bringing both Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to justice.
Props to Rep. Jamie Raskin for his poignant oratory contextualizing Virginia’s life. A snippet:
The world is filled with injustice, especially towards women and girls, because the world is organized much more around power than it is around justice. The only thing that ever tips the scales towards justice, towards freedom, is the courage of brave leaders and the activism of thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of people engaged in solidarity and movement forward demanding change. Virginia Roberts Giuffre was a leader. Generations to come will marvel at her toughness and celebrate her personal conviction and her moral determination to change American society and to change the world. And she’s now not just a hero to this movement, but she’s a hero to the ages who dwells with other great leaders and heroes of our history, like Dolores Huerta, like Rosa Parks, and like Frederick Douglass.
Beautifully put.
Where though, I wondered were other members of congress? It was a busy weekend in DC, as we all know. But surely this service ought to have taken priority on our politician’s calendars? I was disappointed not to see more of them there.
Yesterday, I spoke with someone else who has had her life turned upside down, she believes, because of Epstein.
Amanda Ungaro, a Brazilian ex-model and former longtime partner of Paolo Zampolli, A Trump-appointed UN ambassador, who once introduced Melania Knauss to Donald Trump, has experienced a living hell, in the wake of an acrimonious child custody battle with Zampolli……
Read the rest of the article on Vicky Ward Investigates.
Hey Everyone,
I am back from an invigorating and inspiring time in Norway as a guest of SKUP, the Norwegian Foundation for Investigative Journalism, which was holding its annual conference in Tønsberg, outside Oslo.
The weekend and its concluding awards dinner was the journalistic equivalent of the US’s Oscars weekend. I had not anticipated how enormous (there were 600 attendees) and high-profile this conference is internationally. I am not sure I have ever learned so much useful stuff on a wide variety of important, pressing topics in such a short amount of time. (There was always one English-speaking session throughout the weekend.) I kept wondering how it is that here in the US, we haven’t thought to do the same. We have a lot of catching up to do. SKUP board member Kristoffer Rønneberg told me SKUP has been at this for 30 years.
So, what happened?…….
Continue reading the full article on Vicky Ward Investigates.